The Heroic Enthusiasts, Part I (Gli Eroici Furori) · 31 of 63 · tr. L. Williams
Third Dialogue-f
Fitly, therefore, this rapture of heroic enthusiasm feeds on such "high emprise." For the object is infinite, and in action most simple, and our intellectual power cannot apprehend the infinite except in speech or in a certain manner of speech, so to say in a certain potential or relative inference, as one who proposes to himself the infinity, so that he may constitute for himself a finality where no finality is.
Cic .
Fitly so, because the ultimate ought not to have an end seeing that it is ultimate.
For it is infinite in intention, in perfection, in essence, and in any other manner whatsoever of being final.
Tans .
Thou sayest truly.
Now in this life, that food is such that excites more than it can appease, as that divine poet shows when he says: "My soul is wearied, longing for the living God," and in another place; "Attenuati sunt oculi mei suspicientes in excelsa." Therefore he says, "And though the end desired be not attained, And that my soul in many thoughts is spent, Enough that she enkindle noble fire:" meaning to say that the soul comforts itself, and receives all the glory which it is able in that state to receive, and that it is a participator in that ultimate enthusiasm of man, in so far as he is a man in this present condition, as we see him.
Cic .
It appears to me that the Peripatetics, as explained by Averroes, mean this, when they say that the highest felicity of man consists in perfection through the speculative sciences.
Tans .
It is true, and they say well; because we, in this state, cannot desire nor obtain greater perfection than that in which we are, when our intellect, by means of some noble and intelligible conception, unites itself either to the substance of things hoped for, as those say, or to the divine mind, as it is the fashion to say of the Platonists.
For the present, I will leave reasoning about the soul, or man in another state or mode of being than he can find himself or believe himself to be in.
Cic .
But what perfection or satisfaction can man find in that knowledge which is not perfect?
Tans .
It will never be perfect, so far as understanding the highest object is concerned; but in so far as our intellect can understand it.
Let it suffice that in this and other states there be present to him the divine beauty so far as the horizon of his vision extends.
Cic .
But all men cannot arrive at that, which one or two may reach.
Tans .
Let it suffice that all "run well," and that each does his utmost, for the heroic nature is content and shows its dignity rather in falling, or in failing worthily in the high undertaking, in which it shows the dignity of its spirit, than in succeeding to perfection in lower and less noble things.
Cic .
Truly a dignified and heroic death is better than a mean, low triumph.
Tans .
On that theme I made this sonnet: 16.
Since I have spread my wings to my desire, The more I feel the air beneath my feet, So much the more towards the wind I bend My swiftest pinions, And spurn the world and up towards heaven I go.
Not the sad fate of Daedalus's son Does warn me to turn downwards, But ever higher will I rise.
Well do I see, I shall fall dead to earth; But what life is there can compare with this my death?
Out on the air my heart's voice do I hear: "Whither dost thou carry me, thou fearless one?
Turn back.
Ecstatic, non-rational receptivity to the divine figured as drunkenness — Plato's symposium wine, Rumi's sukr, Eckhart's 'sober drunkenness'; the passive/receptive metaphor for divine encounter, distinct from divine_madness's active possessing rapture.
'Enthusiasm' and 'rapture' function as ecstatic receptivity to the divine fire.
Ecstatic irrational rapture — Plato's mania, Bruno's furore — by which the soul transcends ordinary reason and attains direct contact with divine reality; madness reframed as higher knowledge.
[auto] 'Heroic enthusiasm' and 'rapture' are described as transcending ordinary reason to contact divine reality, matching the definition of furore.
Bruno's eroici furori — a passionate, ennobling spiritual ardor that drives the soul toward divine wisdom; distinguished from base or animal passions by its orientation to infinite truth.
[auto] The passage explicitly discusses the 'rapture of heroic enthusiasm' and the dignity of the heroic nature in high undertakings, which is the core subject of Bruno's work.
The doctrine of the universe as boundless and without center or circumference, populated by innumerable worlds — Bruno's rejection of the closed Aristotelian sphere; the divine and the cosmos as ontologically infinite.
[auto] The text repeatedly emphasizes that the ultimate object is infinite in intention, perfection, and essence, reflecting Bruno's doctrine of the ontologically infinite divine and cosmos.
Diotima's staged ascent from love of beautiful bodies → beautiful souls → beautiful pursuits → beautiful knowledge → Beauty itself; the canonical scala amoris that grounds Plotinus's On the Beautiful and Bruno's Eroici Furori — distinct from generic spiritual_ascent in that eros is the specific motive force.
[auto] The text outlines the ascent from longing to intellectual union with the divine mind, consistent with the scala amoris structure cited in the definition.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
The soul becomes a 'participator in that ultimate enthusiasm' and receives glory, suggesting deification.